Hans-Christian Andersen
hans.andersen at phulse.com
Tue Jan 29 00:16:08 CST 2013
There is much truth to this. PHP is falling into that same fate as VB these days. I'm not going to so bold as to say that PHP is a beautiful language. It isn't in many ways, but it is capable of just as much as the rest of the newer, more "sexy" web languages/frameworks (ie. Ruby on Rails) and, if you are a good coder, you are just as capable of writing good, maintainable code that is a pleasure to work with. But many in our software industry fall prey to wanting to feel superiour to others. The most zealous ones tend to be those who were previously PHP developers, who made an effort to switch to Rails (for instance) and their arrogance is a product of wanting to feel like they have ascended the ladder of craftsmanship. But, alas, this sort of tribal mentality isn't new and is pervasive in the tech world (how long have the ignorant been fighting the PC vs Mac war?). But, on the flip side and to be the devils advocate for a moment, there are also a heck of a lot of bad coders out there. It's all well and good to say you salute those "software laborers" of the world, but they are also the ones responsible for all the exploits, buffer overruns and poorly written websites that end up leaking private data, etc. Sure, they did the job they were asked to do by some luddite manager who understands very little about the importance of good quality code. He/she is more concerned about pumping out as much code & features as possible and meeting targets. As software becomes more and more vital to our existence, the consequences of poorly written code becomes more and more devastating. This is where most of our industry falls flat. While others have regulations to make sure that buildings don't collapse and planes fall out of the sky, in our industry the only thing that seems to matter is whether you can churn out code as fast as possible. Being a good coder matters... But you don't have to be an arrogant arse in the meantime. :) - Hans On 2013-01-28, at 7:52 PM, "Jim Lawrence" <accessd at shaw.ca> wrote: > As a programmer, my work quality (not functionality) falls into all sort of > categories. > > Sometimes, it is a rush to crank out code that I will be loathe to admit to > and other times in long term contracts, the code is a "thing of beauty". All > quick hacks and mashups and eloquently designed code has put food on table. > > Here is an interesting article on that subject (PS there is also a beautiful > Japanese parable that puts our coding into perspective.): > > http://www.javaworld.com/community/?q=node/8649 > > Jim > > _______________________________________________ > dba-Tech mailing list > dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com